


I Promised You a Sunrise

by AlexisGreen



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Forgive me Disney, Forgive me Tolkien, M/M, The Hobbit / TRON: Legacy crossover, Welcome to the grid, oh my god what am I doing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexisGreen/pseuds/AlexisGreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years is a long time to go without a family. As a mysterious disc surfaces with clues to Thrain's disappearance, is Thorin strong enough to face the challenges of the grid and find his father inside EREBOR?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Promised You a Sunrise

“Upload complete” flashed on his screen. Piece of cake. If he cared more, some tips on cyber security would make their way to EREBOR. He didn’t, though. He hadn’t cared for over twenty years. Annual report data was reminder enough of the connection between him and the gaming conglomerate. That and the wire transfers. He didn’t need their money. Not that he’d ever been able to convince Gandalf otherwise. As EREBOR Chairman of the Board – and your father’s best friend, a little traitorous voice whispered in his head – Gandalf insisted in wiring substantial amounts of money into Thorin’s accounts as dividend payments. Too bad the wires always – always – came accompanied by lectures; respecting his father’s legacy, taking his rightful place as the leader of the company, wasting his youth no longer and more, Thorin could recite them by heart. Too bad that Thorin really held no interest in leading EREBOR.

Bringing some of its overpaid, over arrogant executives on the brink of a heart attack though… Now that was something Thorin took pride in. He punched in a password into his tablet and watched the entire content of EREBOR’s latest game, _Take Back Khazad Dum_ , load up on multiple torrent sites, password-free. Another couple of taps on screen and notifications spewed out all over twitter and tumblr. Within seconds, @Azanulbizar’s news had been retweeted over two thousand times. 

The suckers were still ensconced in their board room, counting how much cash would their shares bring this year. They would go home and splash out on another yacht, on more houses that they would have time to live in, on more pointless entertainment for them and their families.

Thorin didn’t have anyone. First a car accident and a mysterious disappearance one year after that had taken care of the matter. And for reasons still unclear even to himself, he blamed EREBOR for everything. The bastards downstairs wouldn’t even know what hit them. Well, at least until Reuters would report on it, which should have been in another 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Yeap, about now. The countdown flipped to zero on his tablet. Thorin grabbed the backpack he’d abandoned on the floor and headed out of the office just as Gemma, Gandalf’s personal assistant, exited the lifts at the end of the hallway. He spun sideways towards the fire escape exit, pushing back on it with his back, meeting her gasp with a two-fingered salute and a chuckle. Being able to execute his prank in Gandalf’s office certainly added to the satisfaction he took in the whole thing.

Seen from the roof, the street below him seemed pretty damn far away. Well, obviously. That wasn’t a surprise. He’d stowed a jet pack up there earlier; he thought of it as the finishing touch to his whole stunt as well as a getaway in case all normal routes were blocked. The heat resistant jacket and helmet should be sufficient to protect him from any hot jet exhaust, in theory at least. Safety was overrated anyway.  The force of the first thrust pushed him over the edge of the building before he’d had a chance to reconsider the implications of potentially plummeting to death. Behind him, the security first-responders stumbled onto the roof at last. Shouts of either warning or threat followed him as he free-fell for a few moments, until leveling out some two hundred feet above the ground. One block further and he would be able to turn in between the buildings and head for Laketown Park. There was no doubt he lacked the altitude for a safe landing, but deploying the parachute in an open space would break his landing enough to avoid any major fractures. He whooped as he made the turn without clipping the fire station on the corner; people below him turned to stare, surprise and excitement carrying to him. Unfortunately, the same audience also caught the moment his parachute snagged on the top of a football post, the canvas wrapping around it before ripping. The impact pulled him back more abruptly than he would have expected and slammed him into the post. Pain shot through his shoulder first, flaring arrow-like through muscle, then his head snapped to connect with the metal and he thought, "Fuck."

He woke up once in the ambulance, sufficiently aware that one of his hands was cuffed to the bed. Dizziness sent him back under before he could assess any other damage.

The second time he came to, his hand was still cuffed to the bed, but the world had stopped spinning around him. Bright lights, white painting, a ridiculous gown on him left no doubt in his mind that he was in a hospital rather than on his way into afterlife. Gandalf materialized next to him, sometime after that. Thorin would have preferred some breakfast, but would have to settle for some answers. More grey peppered his hair since they'd last saw each other, but Gandalf's eyes were as sharp as always. **Would dad have looked like this, all these years later?** The thought came unbidden and unwelcome and Thorin shut it down immediately. He nodded towards his chained hand.

“Am I under arrest?”

“You should be,” scowled Gandalf. “But flying through the city in a civilian aircraft without a permit apparently did not violate anyone's secure airspace, while crashing through a park only counts as a misdemeanor.”

“So why am I cuffed?”

“I’m getting there. You’re charged with hacking the EREBOR mainframe, endangering profits for shareholders, willful property damage… Oh don’t look at me like that, you brought this on yourself. Even so,” Gandalf waved to the policeman who hovered in the doorway to remove the cuffs, “I couldn’t allow EREBOR’s main shareholder to be prosecuted over this.”

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Thorin's grimace, or snarl, if one wanted to be academically correct, said the exact opposite. He eased back into the pillow, rubbing his now free wrist.

Gandalf hadn’t finished though. “No, we packaged it as a publicity stunt. _Take Back Khazad Dum_ is being played by hundreds of thousands as we speak. What we lost in disc sales, we’ll make up in in-game content. And merchandise. And spin-offs. You, my boy, are a genius.”

Thorin groaned. “No, the genius is you, Gandalf. You’d find a way to make money out of selling ice to Eskimos if you had to.”

The bed dipped a little when Gandalf sat down. “Are you ready to go?” 

“What’s the rush? Surely the hospital isn’t kicking me out yet, with my injuries and what not.”

“Minor concussion, that’s what the doctor said. Your shoulder's pretty bruised, but it's nothing a couple of Tylenol won't fix. You already slept for fourteen hours while they checked you out. Get dressed. There’s something you need to see.”

Something in his nature wanted to keep arguing, because that was just what he did, that was what twenty years of growing up on his own taught him; to live alone, to hurt alone, to do only as he wished and damned be everyone else. But he figured he owed Gandalf for the dropped charges, so he sent the older man out while he changed. The t-shirt had seen better days, heck it'd seen better days years ago. The jeans were in slightly better shape, just worn in and only charred around the bottom of one leg. Thorin just pulled his boots on, without bothering with socks. He'd have to chalk off the jacket as collateral damage, it seemed.

He found Gandalf waiting for him in a limo, by the hospital's main entrance. He slid into the back seat, still shaking off the kinks in his shoulder. "You know it's illegal to park here?"

Gandalf ignored him and motioned the driver to depart. Just when the silence threatened to become uncomfortable, he fished a small envelope from his pocket and threw it in Thorin's lap. "This showed up on my desk two days ago."

The envelope contained a single disc. Thorin looked back at Gandalf in confusion. 

"I'll let you discover for yourself."

Thorin continued to glare; he didn't appreciate the old man's games, not on uneven ground when Gandalf seemed to be in a secret while Thorin stood on the outside looking in. He meant to voice his discontent, but the limo stopped and the significance of their pit stop did not escape him. The house, _his house_ , still his after all these years, spoke to him of old memories, of happy times shattered by the most grievous of times. He'd not set foot in there in two decades. "Why are we here? Why would you bring me here?" 

"You should know that I watched it. You see, I didn't know what it was, how it related to you. I could have binned it and you and I would not have been here today. But something stilled my hand," Gandalf explained. "You must watch the disc. The disc is just the beginning though. I suppose I imagined this would be the best place to start."

Forget food, something that Thorin had been acutely missing when they'd left the hospital; nothing would probably sit in his stomach right now. Someday, after grief subsided, even his curiosity would wane and he would be able to look Gandalf in the eye and tell him he didn't care for his cryptic little tidbits. Alas, twenty years of what ifs did not allow him to take that path today.

Gandalf stopped him before Thorin slammed the door behind him. "I had the electricity reconnected yesterday. The Arcade should be up and running."

And Thorin really had to hand it to the old man, the master manipulator of the grand chessboard. If the disc in his hand had anything to do with Thrain's disappearance, then The Arcade was the only place to start looking.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have little clue about what I'm doing here. But I love Tolkien, The Hobbit and Thorin in particular, and the idea of people as programs and programs as people has not left me alone for a while. I also blame this on finally moving more music into my phone and listening to Daft Punk on repeat for days. So there you go. Feedback is very welcome.


End file.
